You have surely read by now about the recent case where a murder suspect was mistakenly allowed to walk out the front door of Delaware County’s George W. Hill Correctional Facility. A red-faced Delaware County District Attorney G. Michael Green said he had been told by prison officials that Brown was confused with another inmate with a similar name.
Oh, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and the authorities vowed through clenched jaws that they’d track down Taaqi "Fame" Brown, drag him back to his cell, and charge him with escape.
Escape? Seems just a bit harsh after you opened the door to his cell, told him to leave, and then opened the prison doors to let him out.
Mr. Brown, by the way, turned himself in at a North Philadelphia police station of his own volition, and was promptly hauled back to Delaware County – to face escape charges. No charges, however, are pending for those guilty of the comedy of errors which allowed for Brown to leave unimpeded.
Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood, Mr. Gung Ho Law and Order himself, waved the whole thing off as “human error”.
You should know a little more about the humans in question, don’t you think?
Since January 2009, the George W. Hill Correctional Facility has been run by a private company, Community Education Centers Inc.,(CEC) of West Caldwell, NJ.
If that name sounds familiar, it may be due to another famous case earlier this year at a CEC-run facility in Colorado in which an employee left an inmate’s “snitch” report where other inmates could easily read it. They did, and the snitch got what snitches usually get when caught red handed. The snitch’s family, however, sued both CEC and the state.
Or it might ring a bell on account of the lawsuit filed by the family of Derek Harris, a 51 year old barber from Newark, NJ, who was arrested last spring for non-payment of parking tickets, and placed in the Essex County, NJ, facility for non-violent offenders, run by CEC. No one was watching while three fellow inmates beat Harris to death.
Don’t think I’ve picked out a few isolated incidents here folks. I invite you – no, I urge you – to simply type “Community Education Centers” and “lawsuit” into your favorite search engine. Now just start clicking on case after case, in state after state, and tell me you’re satisfied that private companies like CEC are doing a competent job in managing prisons.
Officials at the Delaware County facility where Brown made his great escape have not been returning reporters’ calls since the event. They did e-mail a statement to the Inquirer that the company's "operational track record has been exceptional."
When you think about it long and hard, that’s not really a lie, is it? Exceptionally poor is, indeed, exceptional, and I commend them on brilliantly exploiting this semantic. It’s that kind of forked tongue wordplay that makes owning a company which takes oppressive advantage of inmates so insanely profitable, especially in hard times.
The public clamors for more prisons, and provides a steady stream of inmates ready for warehousing. Politicians, pressured by the public to get these miscreants away from polite society - are equally pressured, by that same public – to hold down prison costs and slash correctional budgets.
Enter the privateer prison management company – like CEC and several others - promising to hold the line on costs while keeping us safe from the boogie men inside. So what if they cut a few corners here and there, right? Right?
John Whelan, chairman of the Delaware County Council, said County officials would review procedures with Community Education Centers to ensure that the “breach” was not repeated.
"This type of mistake is unacceptable," Whelan told reporters, in what seems an early shoo-in for Understatement of the Year.
If Taaqi “Fame” Brown is guilty of the original crime for which he was awaiting trial, the May 2, 2009, killing of 19-year old Aaron Kearney, then the mistake which allowed him to walk out was not just unacceptable, it was disastrous. Kearney was shot dead in front of about 100 people, many of them children, on an Upper Darby playground.
Still, as unsavory a character as Brown may be, it seems more than a stretch to me to hand a man his walking papers, then charge him with escape when he walks. And it is precisely because Brown constitutes such a danger to society that the burden of his “escape” should not be borne alone.
His private enterprise accomplices should share his cell.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
The Few, The Proud… And The Even Fewer
You probably heard about the recent study which concluded that some 80 to 90 percent of Philadelphia’s young people aged 17 – 24 are unqualified for military service. The reasons? According to Mission: Readiness, the nonprofit group responsible for the study, they’re poorly educated, or physically unfit, or possess criminal records. Some, presumably, are all three.
The same group, by the way, puts the national rate of unfit-for-service young folks at around 75 percent, so Philly isn’t that far behind the curve, but it’s a steep curve.
There was a time when military service was almost the court of last resort for inner city youth. A scarcity of jobs and career opportunities have long been the impetus for minorities to join the military, a decision I made myself thirty years ago, and have never regretted. And we’ve all heard plenty of stories from the previous generation of veterans about borderline delinquents whose court cases resulted in the choice of a criminal record or a government-sponsored trip to Vietnam.
The point being, while the military wasn’t always necessarily the first option, at least it was always an option of necessity. Now you’re telling us that only a small fraction of our young folks even qualify to become a grunt or deck swabby? Having once been a deck swabby, I can state from experience that this position requires all the intelligence and reasoning capabilities of pocket lint.
As I recall it, the Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery test wasn’t exactly rocket science. If you’ve ever been in the military, you only had to look around your barracks to know good and well the standards just can’t be that high.
This is why I am hoping beyond hope that the majority of our 90 percent are unqualified for service because of asthma or poor eyesight. Heck, I’ll take obesity and criminal records any day over the thought that our young people aren’t smart enough to pass a test that I know for sure has been passed by some of the dumbest people I’ve ever met.
Now, there is probably a contingent of parents who’ll say, “So what? I’m glad my child is unqualified for military service, considering they’ll most likely be shipped halfway around the world to fight and die on behalf of big oil.”
I would agree, but only to a point. You can certainly be happy your child won’t be asked to participate in a war you find unjust, but that’s not the same as being happy your child is unqualified for a job which requires so few qualifications.
And that’s really the overarching point of Mission: Readiness’ study. The organization, comprised of retired senior leaders from every branch of the military, is primarily concerned with making sure America maintains a sufficiently sized, well-trained army. From their website’s mission statement: “Competent, educated, and healthy young people are the future patriots tasked with defending America’s national security and prosperity. A limited recruitment pool will hold back our military readiness and erode our national security in the long run. If we want to ensure that we have a strong, capable fighting force, we need to help America’s youth succeed academically, stay physically fit, and abide by the law.”
Their solution, and one that’s hard to argue with, is increased early childhood education – putting kids on the right track long before they become teenage problems. Attending the Mission: Readiness news conference was U.S. Army Major Seth Williams, Philadelphia’s District Attorney and a longtime advocate of early education and intervention programs.
"There's a direct relationship between the lack of education, the lack of economic opportunity and too many young people feeling they have lives of hopelessness, frustration and despair," Williams said.
For the record, both Williams and Mission: Readiness are right. There is a critical need to expand programs for pre-schoolers and elementary schoolers stressing academic success and social behavior. Such programs have proven to be a good first step in the process of turning out more productive citizens, and fewer unemployable dropouts.
Where I veer slightly from the Mission: Readiness position is the proposed outcome for this new generation of academically and physically fit high school graduates.
I’m hoping they become leaders of such intelligence and character that they qualify for any job they want – regardless of our military’s state of readiness. And I’m hoping that those who do choose the military become leaders of such intelligence and character that they don’t send our young people off to wars conceived through lying and fought for profits.
The same group, by the way, puts the national rate of unfit-for-service young folks at around 75 percent, so Philly isn’t that far behind the curve, but it’s a steep curve.
There was a time when military service was almost the court of last resort for inner city youth. A scarcity of jobs and career opportunities have long been the impetus for minorities to join the military, a decision I made myself thirty years ago, and have never regretted. And we’ve all heard plenty of stories from the previous generation of veterans about borderline delinquents whose court cases resulted in the choice of a criminal record or a government-sponsored trip to Vietnam.
The point being, while the military wasn’t always necessarily the first option, at least it was always an option of necessity. Now you’re telling us that only a small fraction of our young folks even qualify to become a grunt or deck swabby? Having once been a deck swabby, I can state from experience that this position requires all the intelligence and reasoning capabilities of pocket lint.
As I recall it, the Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery test wasn’t exactly rocket science. If you’ve ever been in the military, you only had to look around your barracks to know good and well the standards just can’t be that high.
This is why I am hoping beyond hope that the majority of our 90 percent are unqualified for service because of asthma or poor eyesight. Heck, I’ll take obesity and criminal records any day over the thought that our young people aren’t smart enough to pass a test that I know for sure has been passed by some of the dumbest people I’ve ever met.
Now, there is probably a contingent of parents who’ll say, “So what? I’m glad my child is unqualified for military service, considering they’ll most likely be shipped halfway around the world to fight and die on behalf of big oil.”
I would agree, but only to a point. You can certainly be happy your child won’t be asked to participate in a war you find unjust, but that’s not the same as being happy your child is unqualified for a job which requires so few qualifications.
And that’s really the overarching point of Mission: Readiness’ study. The organization, comprised of retired senior leaders from every branch of the military, is primarily concerned with making sure America maintains a sufficiently sized, well-trained army. From their website’s mission statement: “Competent, educated, and healthy young people are the future patriots tasked with defending America’s national security and prosperity. A limited recruitment pool will hold back our military readiness and erode our national security in the long run. If we want to ensure that we have a strong, capable fighting force, we need to help America’s youth succeed academically, stay physically fit, and abide by the law.”
Their solution, and one that’s hard to argue with, is increased early childhood education – putting kids on the right track long before they become teenage problems. Attending the Mission: Readiness news conference was U.S. Army Major Seth Williams, Philadelphia’s District Attorney and a longtime advocate of early education and intervention programs.
"There's a direct relationship between the lack of education, the lack of economic opportunity and too many young people feeling they have lives of hopelessness, frustration and despair," Williams said.
For the record, both Williams and Mission: Readiness are right. There is a critical need to expand programs for pre-schoolers and elementary schoolers stressing academic success and social behavior. Such programs have proven to be a good first step in the process of turning out more productive citizens, and fewer unemployable dropouts.
Where I veer slightly from the Mission: Readiness position is the proposed outcome for this new generation of academically and physically fit high school graduates.
I’m hoping they become leaders of such intelligence and character that they qualify for any job they want – regardless of our military’s state of readiness. And I’m hoping that those who do choose the military become leaders of such intelligence and character that they don’t send our young people off to wars conceived through lying and fought for profits.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Will Fix Tickets For Food
I hope you’ll take the time to read the report from the office of Philadelphia’s Inspector General Amy Kurland on the shenanigans over at the Bureau of Administrative Adjudication (BAA), the arm of the city Finance Department that handles parking ticket appeals. You can find the highlights on her web site: http://www.phila.gov/oig/news.html but I have to warn you: it’s not pretty. Of course, stories of corruption and cronyism are never pretty, but read the report anyway. Six people so far have lost their jobs over it.
First, though, let’s be honest about one basic fact of life in Philadelphia.
Since the first mounted patrolman slapped a ticket on the first horse and buggy for facing the wrong direction on a one-way cobblestone street, there have been people you can call on to make the violations disappear. And it has always been based on one thing: who you know and who knows you. If you’re in tight with the right people, poof! The tickets go away, and you owe someone a bottle of scotch.
This is neither new nor surprising, but it does have a tendency to make people mad. Specifically, the vast majority of people who get parking tickets, but don’t have an inside connection. See, most folks end up paying their parking tickets, even the ones they should never have been issued, because paying is easier than slogging through the time-consuming appeals process.
Which brings us back to the facts of the report.
The BAA was headed by Deputy Finance Director Clorise Wynn. Make that former deputy finance director, because Wynn decided to quit her six-figure job about two weeks ago, right after what must have been quite an uncomfortable interview with Kurland's investigators.
Wynn has had the job since 2003, when former director Joseph F. Hoffman Jr., was replaced after the FBI caught him on videotape accepting cash bribes from the owner of a taxicab company. By the time he was discovered, Hoffman had personally thrown out 126,000 parking tickets over a six-year period. He was, if nothing else, consistent.
Even watching Hoffman’s humiliating fall from grace, however, appears to have had little effect on Wynn. The Inspector General’s report accuses her of fixing 35 tickets for her daughter and personally taking care of about $50,000 worth of parking tickets for an unnamed company that provided her with free or discounted food. You read that right, friends, she traded in her soft, high-paying city job for free grub. (As a side point, I hereby nominate this as Philly’s Dumbest Bribe, beating by a mile former City Councilman Rick Mariano’s old record of selling out his office for a free gym membership.)
A BAA supervisor who decided to take an early retirement and two of the agency’s hearing officers also followed Wynn out the door, as well as two Parking Authority employees who were accused of having their own parking tickets erased.
It should be noted that Parking Authority Executive Director Vincent J. Fenerty Jr. and City Finance Director Rob Dubow fully cooperated with Kurland's investigation, which won praise from Mayor Michael Nutter.
"This is not the phone company," Nutter said at a press conference announcing the Inspector General’s report. "We don't have a friends-and-family program here."
Not to quibble over semantics, but a friends-and-family plan is exactly what we had, and what we have had in Philadelphia since the inception of city government. But the mayor is dead right in praising the IG’s efforts to stop it.
Rooting out municipal corruption was a huge part of Nutter’s election platform, vowing to end the infamous “pay to play” system that for years made Philadelphia’s city government one of the most famously crooked institutions in America. Any effort to live up to that campaign promise is an effort well spent.
Will it be enough to discourage present and future employees from straying down the same path? Probably not. Greed is a powerful drug, capable of making someone act against even their own self-interest. The thing that stops people from taking bribes or giving favors is less the pang of moral conscience, and more the certain knowledge that they’ll be caught.
When you see a highway patrol car parked on the turnpike median, you take your foot off the gas, even if you’re driving under the speed limit. It’s a natural reaction. Knowing this, troopers sometimes place empty cars there just to get people to slow down. It works.
On the other hand, empty patrol cars don’t usually get parking tickets.
First, though, let’s be honest about one basic fact of life in Philadelphia.
Since the first mounted patrolman slapped a ticket on the first horse and buggy for facing the wrong direction on a one-way cobblestone street, there have been people you can call on to make the violations disappear. And it has always been based on one thing: who you know and who knows you. If you’re in tight with the right people, poof! The tickets go away, and you owe someone a bottle of scotch.
This is neither new nor surprising, but it does have a tendency to make people mad. Specifically, the vast majority of people who get parking tickets, but don’t have an inside connection. See, most folks end up paying their parking tickets, even the ones they should never have been issued, because paying is easier than slogging through the time-consuming appeals process.
Which brings us back to the facts of the report.
The BAA was headed by Deputy Finance Director Clorise Wynn. Make that former deputy finance director, because Wynn decided to quit her six-figure job about two weeks ago, right after what must have been quite an uncomfortable interview with Kurland's investigators.
Wynn has had the job since 2003, when former director Joseph F. Hoffman Jr., was replaced after the FBI caught him on videotape accepting cash bribes from the owner of a taxicab company. By the time he was discovered, Hoffman had personally thrown out 126,000 parking tickets over a six-year period. He was, if nothing else, consistent.
Even watching Hoffman’s humiliating fall from grace, however, appears to have had little effect on Wynn. The Inspector General’s report accuses her of fixing 35 tickets for her daughter and personally taking care of about $50,000 worth of parking tickets for an unnamed company that provided her with free or discounted food. You read that right, friends, she traded in her soft, high-paying city job for free grub. (As a side point, I hereby nominate this as Philly’s Dumbest Bribe, beating by a mile former City Councilman Rick Mariano’s old record of selling out his office for a free gym membership.)
A BAA supervisor who decided to take an early retirement and two of the agency’s hearing officers also followed Wynn out the door, as well as two Parking Authority employees who were accused of having their own parking tickets erased.
It should be noted that Parking Authority Executive Director Vincent J. Fenerty Jr. and City Finance Director Rob Dubow fully cooperated with Kurland's investigation, which won praise from Mayor Michael Nutter.
"This is not the phone company," Nutter said at a press conference announcing the Inspector General’s report. "We don't have a friends-and-family program here."
Not to quibble over semantics, but a friends-and-family plan is exactly what we had, and what we have had in Philadelphia since the inception of city government. But the mayor is dead right in praising the IG’s efforts to stop it.
Rooting out municipal corruption was a huge part of Nutter’s election platform, vowing to end the infamous “pay to play” system that for years made Philadelphia’s city government one of the most famously crooked institutions in America. Any effort to live up to that campaign promise is an effort well spent.
Will it be enough to discourage present and future employees from straying down the same path? Probably not. Greed is a powerful drug, capable of making someone act against even their own self-interest. The thing that stops people from taking bribes or giving favors is less the pang of moral conscience, and more the certain knowledge that they’ll be caught.
When you see a highway patrol car parked on the turnpike median, you take your foot off the gas, even if you’re driving under the speed limit. It’s a natural reaction. Knowing this, troopers sometimes place empty cars there just to get people to slow down. It works.
On the other hand, empty patrol cars don’t usually get parking tickets.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
When Good Bets Go Bad
The weather is beautiful, the birds are singing, and the entire city smells like barbeque and freshly-mowed grass. It may not always be sunny in Philadelphia, but it certainly is right now.
I feel it is my duty, however, as a sworn curmudgeon, to point out that overall; we’re not having a good week.
The Phillies have suddenly forgotten that the object of baseball is to score runs. Up and down the lineup, we have some of the best hitters in the league, yet for a solid week and a half, we’ve stunk up the place. One notable and exceptional highlight: the sheer artistry of Roy Halladay’s perfect game. But even that sweetness was quickly replaced by the bitter taste of one scoreless loss after another.
The Flyers, sadly, have been smacked around so far in the Stanley Cup Finals, out skated, out shot, out muscled, and outclassed by the Chicago Blackhawks, whose fans have used the occasion to disparage both our city and our team as second-rate wannabees.
That particular knife was shoved in even deeper by our own Mayor Michael Nutter, whose painfully pathetic bet with Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley will probably go down in history as the lamest sports bet of all time.
You know how it works: in the championship game or series of professional baseball, basketball, football and hockey, the mayors of the opposing cities will make a friendly wager, usually involving the city’s signature food. Loser has to send the goodies to the winner, and will probably be forced to wear the winning team’s jersey for a day. Silly, yes, but all in good fun.
Good fun, that is, until Mayor Nutter made us all look like pencil-necked geeks.
If the Flyers win, Daley has wagered a real taste of Chicago: deep dish pizzas, Italian beef sandwiches, Italian sausages, three cases of local beer, and a 50-pound chocolate almond bar are among the dozens of treats put up by the City of Big Shoulders.
And what has our mayor wagered on behalf of the citizens of Philadelphia if the Blackhawks hang on to beat our boys for Lord Stanley’s Cup?
From the official Mayoral News Release: “Mayor Nutter will volunteer in a community garden with the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability. If the Flyers win, Mayor Nutter will donate the food grown to Philabundance, the region’s largest hunger relief organization. If the Black Hawks win, Mayor Nutter will donate the food grown to the Greater Chicago Food Depository.”
They’re ponying up pizzas, fat sandwiches, prime steaks and the world’s biggest candy bar; and our big-time wager is, what, peas and carrots?
But wait, it gets worse.
Here’s our fearless leader’s official statement, also from the press release:
“While the Flyers fans and Black Hawks fans may not agree on much these days, everyone knows that eating good, fresh foods is key to staying healthy,” said Mayor Nutter. “I look forward not only to watching the Flyers win the Stanley Cup but to volunteering in a community garden and donating the produce to Philabundance.”
With all due respect, Mr. Mayor, this attitude is far out of touch with the will of your constituents. We do not want to you send them healthy produce. If the Blackhawks beat the Flyers, we want you to send Daley every artery-clogging, heart-stopping, cholesterol-soaked item on the local menu.
Send him truckloads of scrapple, cheesesteaks, hoagies, and roast pork sandwiches. Send pretzels, water ice, Frank’s sodas and Tastykakes. You don’t get beaten to a pulp and then wish the victors good health and long life. You wish them a massive coronary. That’s the Philadelphia way.
However, I’m willing to give the mayor a bit of a pass on this one, because he’s probably been distracted lately by the fact that the city’s treasury is as bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard.
Nutter had pushed for $14 million in additional revenues through a tax on sodas and sugar-sweetened drinks, or through raising property taxes by 12 percent. When that failed, the mayor proposed $20 million in cuts, including the cancellation of two police recruit classes, eliminating two fire companies, and cutting branch-library schedules from five days to four. In addition, the city’s top department heads were informed this week that their budgets would be cut by an extra two percent.
Since he has a lot on his plate, I would suggest the following to Mayor Nutter in the unlikely event that another Philadelphia team finds itself on the cusp of championship glory this year:
Don’t wager anything. Paying off a bet with onions and potatoes is downright embarrassing.
I feel it is my duty, however, as a sworn curmudgeon, to point out that overall; we’re not having a good week.
The Phillies have suddenly forgotten that the object of baseball is to score runs. Up and down the lineup, we have some of the best hitters in the league, yet for a solid week and a half, we’ve stunk up the place. One notable and exceptional highlight: the sheer artistry of Roy Halladay’s perfect game. But even that sweetness was quickly replaced by the bitter taste of one scoreless loss after another.
The Flyers, sadly, have been smacked around so far in the Stanley Cup Finals, out skated, out shot, out muscled, and outclassed by the Chicago Blackhawks, whose fans have used the occasion to disparage both our city and our team as second-rate wannabees.
That particular knife was shoved in even deeper by our own Mayor Michael Nutter, whose painfully pathetic bet with Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley will probably go down in history as the lamest sports bet of all time.
You know how it works: in the championship game or series of professional baseball, basketball, football and hockey, the mayors of the opposing cities will make a friendly wager, usually involving the city’s signature food. Loser has to send the goodies to the winner, and will probably be forced to wear the winning team’s jersey for a day. Silly, yes, but all in good fun.
Good fun, that is, until Mayor Nutter made us all look like pencil-necked geeks.
If the Flyers win, Daley has wagered a real taste of Chicago: deep dish pizzas, Italian beef sandwiches, Italian sausages, three cases of local beer, and a 50-pound chocolate almond bar are among the dozens of treats put up by the City of Big Shoulders.
And what has our mayor wagered on behalf of the citizens of Philadelphia if the Blackhawks hang on to beat our boys for Lord Stanley’s Cup?
From the official Mayoral News Release: “Mayor Nutter will volunteer in a community garden with the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability. If the Flyers win, Mayor Nutter will donate the food grown to Philabundance, the region’s largest hunger relief organization. If the Black Hawks win, Mayor Nutter will donate the food grown to the Greater Chicago Food Depository.”
They’re ponying up pizzas, fat sandwiches, prime steaks and the world’s biggest candy bar; and our big-time wager is, what, peas and carrots?
But wait, it gets worse.
Here’s our fearless leader’s official statement, also from the press release:
“While the Flyers fans and Black Hawks fans may not agree on much these days, everyone knows that eating good, fresh foods is key to staying healthy,” said Mayor Nutter. “I look forward not only to watching the Flyers win the Stanley Cup but to volunteering in a community garden and donating the produce to Philabundance.”
With all due respect, Mr. Mayor, this attitude is far out of touch with the will of your constituents. We do not want to you send them healthy produce. If the Blackhawks beat the Flyers, we want you to send Daley every artery-clogging, heart-stopping, cholesterol-soaked item on the local menu.
Send him truckloads of scrapple, cheesesteaks, hoagies, and roast pork sandwiches. Send pretzels, water ice, Frank’s sodas and Tastykakes. You don’t get beaten to a pulp and then wish the victors good health and long life. You wish them a massive coronary. That’s the Philadelphia way.
However, I’m willing to give the mayor a bit of a pass on this one, because he’s probably been distracted lately by the fact that the city’s treasury is as bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard.
Nutter had pushed for $14 million in additional revenues through a tax on sodas and sugar-sweetened drinks, or through raising property taxes by 12 percent. When that failed, the mayor proposed $20 million in cuts, including the cancellation of two police recruit classes, eliminating two fire companies, and cutting branch-library schedules from five days to four. In addition, the city’s top department heads were informed this week that their budgets would be cut by an extra two percent.
Since he has a lot on his plate, I would suggest the following to Mayor Nutter in the unlikely event that another Philadelphia team finds itself on the cusp of championship glory this year:
Don’t wager anything. Paying off a bet with onions and potatoes is downright embarrassing.
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